143 - What is love? ❤️
Hey there, !
A bit personal, a bit nostalgic. Personal musings on love.
“January, you start the year off fine / February, you’re my little Valentine…”
There’s a sweet bitterness thinking back to the comfortable routines of a younger self. In my case, it’s the short period of time between finishing Chinese school on a Saturday morning, and getting to our local Hong Kong cafe to have lunch.
My sister and I would be bundled into our faded Ford Telstar, blue striped seats stamped with the dust and mud of a thousand adventures. In the summer, the hard, plastic, faux-leather door handles were hot and slightly tacky to touch, but the cushioned seats and dusty air helped us settle in for the short commute.
My parents would put on the easy listening channel, 1377 AM, the repeated exposure causing its music to be indelibly inked on the crevasses of my brain. The hits from the 60’s, 70’s and 80’s crooned from the tinny speakers, giving me my first taste of Neil Sedaka, Fleetwood Mac, Billy Joel, The BeeGees, The Beatles, Elvis, Roberta Flack and Aretha Franklin.
They really knew how to hold a tune, y’know?
“Love me tender, love me sweet, never let me go…”
The messages of those songs reflect an older, romantic time full of ballads and love songs. It’s true, we’re all nostalgic for ages past that were the ‘best days’, the ‘golden days’ through the decades. But the love songs from this era are absolute classics.
Take Elvis - how can anyone mistake his dulcet baritone when his lyrics come swooning through the air: “Wise men say, only fools run in…” (or maybe you've heard the Kina Grannis version from Crazy Rich Asians?)
Or Aretha with her classic “The moment I wake up / before I put on my makeup / I say a little prayer for you…”
The poetry of the era was incomparable and is reinforced by the fact that the lyrics are still so recognisable and singable today. Every time the radio came on, I’d try my best to pick up the tune, the lyrics, the rhythm...score it into my memory, and wait for the next time it came around so I could sing to it again. As I learned a little bit more of each of the jukebox of songs, I’m sure the folds in my brain rearranged themselves to better pick up on those motifs and themes.
“I know your eyes in the morning sun / I feel you touch me in the pouring rain / And the moment that you wander far from me / I want to feel you in my arms again”
As we pull into the local Jade Hong Kong Cafe, my sister and I get excited. My parents loved going to this place - it reminded them of home, I guess - and we picked up on that energy. I couldn't pinpoint why we would like it - the hard backed, off-white booths, the laminated menus, the plastic A and B special meals that were cheap yet generous, the TVs blasting Cantonese news from TVBJ, the posters for various Chinese TV shows up on the wall - but it was all we knew! As Chinese-Australians, congregating in places like this made life much more bearable. It was our weekly church service - the holy trinity of food, language, and people who look and talk just like you.
Those TV shows, I tell ya. Hong Kong television has made leaps and strides since TVBJ, but as the public channel, it had its monopoly pick of actors/actresses, and used the exact same formula for every story it told. Detective story, hospital story, old-timey story; they always had love triangles, good vs evil, mysteries, wise men, femme fatales...so I guess, just like normal US sitcoms…
When I started to watch more English speaking movies, living in an English speaking country, I remember gravitating to rom-coms. I have no idea why. Other than sci-fi, I really loved watching stories about romance, about love, about two people ending up together in the end against all odds. The red flags were a bit too over the top in the movies (does she have an evil ex I should be looking out for? Why isn’t he sharing her family past with me? Is she secretly rich and/or a murderer?!), but every good story needs conflict.
"You're just too good to be true / Can't take my eyes off of you / You feel like heaven to touch / I wanna hold you so much"
Oh, to be Heath Ledger dancing along the bleachers performing his signature way in 10 Things I Hate About You. Watching love stories without any knowledge of what it's like to be in an actual romantic relationships really warps your perception of what the world can be. Especially so if you got to single-sex male schools from Year 7 to 12 - where do you actually get to hang out or interact with girls?!
I gorged on the classics - Pretty Woman, Love Actually, When Harry Met Sally - and yearned to find my other half, my soulmate, my one true love. To watch these movies is to fall into a magical spell of coincidence, wonder, happiness, adventure, miscommunication, resolution and ultimately, love. It was glorious, it was brilliant, and I wanted my part of it.
I used to desperately search for such love, but never realised that you have to be the one who goes out to find it, rather than having it end up on your doorstep through a wildly hilarious meet-cute. It was something that I just didn't know how to ask for, how to find, or have the bravery to actually get. I spent many years pining, and crushing on people that I probably should have just gone up to and asked, be rejected, and moved on.
Ah well, life's a learning experience.
These days, it’s in vogue for rom-coms to try and show you the reality of love. An ex introduced me to the Before Sunrise trilogy - a wonderful exploration of two character’s relationship over a wide span of years, starting with a magical 24 hours together, bumping into each other 10 years later, and then the trials and tribulations of actually being married. This was a rather more 'real' version of what could happen over time, the initial butterflies, the conflict, the scars, and the compromise that you need in a relationship that lives on for years and years. And yes, that was my experience too - it's something that you work on, and work for, together, until you can't.
But those never dulled my spirits. No matter the trials, the message is always hopeful, and I’m an optimist. Love is always worth it. Being in love is indescribable...gives you a private world together, to share your burdens, and worries, and happiness, and success. It is beauty, it transcends death ('What is grief, if not love perservering?'), and one day I'm sure I'll have it again.
In the meantime, I'm still listening to those old tunes.
“Let's fall in love / Why shouldn't we fall in love? / Now is the time for it / While we are young / Let's fall in love”
Chat soon :)
PS. Bonus points if you can guess all the song names / singers from the quotes!
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✔️Real Life Recommendations
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Matsumoto - a place I went for my birthday this year. It's a really cute place that did sushi boats - and has some cat-face robots that bring dishes out to you (which is a kind of cute gimmick). Alas I did not know that the robots also sang a loud 'Happy Birthday' song as well...
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Stranger Things Season 4 - iykyk; Season 4 has been a wonderful double-down on the horror genre (rather than just the 80s genre that it was before). Lots of references to other horror movies, and general vibes are hella creepy. The music is spectacular this time around - the foreboding, the terror...highly impressive how it's come back so well! Only complaint is that every bloody episode is like an hour+, which is engaging but takes so damn long to get through. Otherwise - ecommended if you wanna see more horror vibes for Stranger Things!
🚌 Adventures on the Information Super-Highway
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Teen Girl Posed For 8 Years As Married Man To Write About Baseball And Harass Women - the article is about as insane as the headline. She started writing for a baseball website from 13 years old, and harassed a number of women, getting them to send nudes and emotionally manipulating them. The internet is a weird place, huh.
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I locked myself out of my digital life - reading this made me realise how much dependence we have, and the inter-dependencies between our technology channels (e.g. being able to MFA using a phone, for a computer). Even my password system relies on my memory, rather than a password manager, because I thought it would be more secure...but what if I forget it for some reason? Yeeesh.
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Don't Go First - a bunch of different rules when you need to choose who to 'go first' - mostly community contributions so they're pretty fun!